Vickie Mcdonald (28 years old. Born in United Kingdom. Lives in: Glasgow)glasgow school of art

By using the grotesque, the visceral and the chaotic, I use video installation to explore our primal and un socialized selves. I want my work to have a sense of abjection and transgression. I put my ideas in a horror film context to explore the ideas of censorship and horror as popular entertainment. I’m interested in the morality that comes with enjoying horror films, and the idea that simulated gore and violence is conside ...[more]

Artist photo

Work of art I would like to make

With the 4NS opportunity, I would produce an interactive video installation, expanding on themes I explored in my degree show work.

I would cover the floor of a darkened room in stuffed toe like shapes that I’ve used before to represent Bataille’s theory that the big toe symbolizes capitalism. I want to continue using the same concept of excess and uncontrollable commodity I used in ‘Nymph toe : puss, what’s the fuss.’
With my degree show piece, the audience felt uneasy about interacting with my installation, not knowing whether they could touch the walls or sit on the seating. But by covering the floor, the audience are forced to interact with the piece.
Placed around the space will be wooden stools with stuffed shapes as the seating, some soft, some solid with resin, some moving via rotating motors placed inside, and some with programmed sound chips creating a movie gimmick (influenced by William Castles seat buzzers for his film ‘The Tingler’) to mock film commodity. The audience will be encouraged to use the seating to watch a video projection.

By expanding on my work with horror films, I intend to create another video featuring characters wearing costumes that mirror the ambiguous sewn shapes. The film will follow a monstrous character performing various foot rituals. I want the sound chips to react with certain parts of the film, adding a visceral and tactile layer to the entertainment experience.
I want the viewer to be uncomfortably engaged in the film. By creating a multi sensory experience, I want cinema to feel less of a simulated experience.

The Art Newspaper has published its international survey of 2010 museum attendance figures, and our three exhibitions last
year have been ranked as the second, third and fourth most visited in London, surpassed only by Van Gogh at the Royal Academy of Arts. This follows on from The Art Newspaper's 2009
ranking in which the Saatchi Gallery presented the top two most visited exhibitions in London.